Roger Stone Is Going To Jail & George Soros is spreading Conspiracy Theories

Divided We Stand 2/20/20

George Soros calls for Zuckerberg, Sandberg to step down from Facebook in scathing letter: 

George Soros called for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's respective CEO and COO, to be "removed from control" in a letter published in Financial Times.

The liberal billionaire, who has long been a vocal critic of Facebook's head executives and is the subject of many fabricated conspiracy theories peddled on the platform, reiterated the claim that Zuckerberg is in "some kind of mutual assistance arrangement" with President Donald Trump for his re-election.

The company rejected Soros' claims in the letter. In a statement, a representative from Facebook said that the suggestion that the company is connected to a figure or party "runs counter to our values and the facts."

An analysis from the Guardian published last month found that Trump spent around $20 million on hundreds of thousands of ads on Facebook, some of which were false, outspending all the Democratic candidates. 

Despite a litany of criticism, Facebook continues to run political advertising on its platform, repeatedly stating that it should not litigate the legitimacy of claims made in campaign ads. Twitter banned it. 

Trump says 'nobody can even define' what Roger Stone did. Here are crimes Stone committed

President Donald Trump criticized the Justice Department for prosecuting his longtime associate Roger Stone and recommending that Stone serve up to nine years in prison. He claims Stone did “nothing” and “nobody even can define what he did,” but that's his opinion.

The Justice Department summed it up in November when the jury rendered its verdict: “Stone was found guilty of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness.”

All of the charges stemmed from Stone’s attempts to thwart the House intelligence committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

On Feb. 10, the Department of Justice recommended a sentence ranging from 87 to 108 months, or roughly seven to nine years, saying, “Obstructing such critical investigations … strikes at the very heart of our American democracy.”

Mueller concluded in a report in March 2019, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” to help Trump win the election. The Russians did this in two ways, according to the Mueller report:

“First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents."

More points 

The federal investigation uncovered a sophisticated hacking operation by a unit responsible for intelligence collection for the Russian military. The Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, “hacked the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton Campaign,” the Mueller report says. The GRU gained access to more than 30 computers on the Democratic National Committee network and “stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks,” the report says.

At Stone’s trial, Gates testified that in April 2016 Stone privately told him “WikiLeaks would be submitting or dropping information” that could help the Trump campaign. That was about three months before WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 DNC emails – the first of document dumps that exceeded 44,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, as WikiLeaks says on its website.

On Oct. 3, 2016, Stone tweeted, “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon.” Assange is WikiLeaks’ founder. That same day, Matthew Boyle, the Washington editor of Breitbart, sent Stone a text message that said, “Assange – what’s he got? Hope it’s good.” Stone replied, “It is. I’d tell Bannon but he doesn’t call me back.” Four days later, WikiLeaks released a batch of emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

According to the sentencing memo Feb. 10, Stone made at least five public statements from Aug. 8 to 18, 2016, that indicated he had a source connected to Assange. The committee asked Stone to name the person. Stone told the House committee it was radio host Randy Credico, who interviewed Assange on Aug. 25, 2016.

That was a lie, according to the evidence prosecutors presented at the trial, including Credico’s testimony.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Stone threatened Credico in an attempt to prevent him from testifying before the House committee and contradicting Stone’s testimony. 

Stone lied when he told the House committee “that he had no written communications with his intermediary and that he had no written communications referencing Assange,” according to the sentencing memo.

Stone lied when he told the House committee that he “did not ask the intermediary to do anything on Stone’s behalf,” the memo says. “In fact, as early as July 2016, Stone told Corsi to ‘get to Assange’ and ‘get the pending wikileaks emails.’ ”

Stone lied when he said “he had never discussed his conversations with the person he referred to as his … ‘intermediary’ with anyone involved in the Trump Campaign,” the sentencing memo says. “In fact, Stone had conversations with Gates, Bannon, and Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort about information that he had received from Corsi and Credico.” Federal prosecutors submitted Stone’s phone records that showed more than 150 calls with Manafort, more than 120 with Gates and 60 with Trump, as Politico reported.

Religion in America

Christianity is the most adhered to religion in the United States, with 65% of polled American adults identifying themselves as Christian in 2019. This is down from 85% in 1990, 81.6% in 2001, and 12% lower than the 78% reported for 2012. 

About 45% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.

In 2016, Christians represent 73.7% of the total population, 48.9% identifying as Protestants, 23.0% as Catholics, and 1.8% as Mormons, and are followed by people having no religion with 18.2% of the total population.

“In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050.” “Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Previous Pew Research Center studies have shown that the share of Americans who believe in God with absolute certainty has declined in recent years, while the share saying they have doubts about God’s existence – or that they do not believe in God at all – has grown.

These trends raise a series of questions: When respondents say they don’t believe in God, what are they rejecting? Are ...